NYCPHP Meetup

[David Mintz]

OK, this may be a little OT, but OTOH it's about web/database programming
(and the Customer Experience).

I have been back and forth with Travelocity's customer service because I
complained about the following phenomenon. You search for flights; you
select an outboound flight priced at $405/round trip; you select a return
flight priced at $405/round trip; then you come to a screen that says
oh, sorry, make that $652 for this itinerary. Fine, you say; prices are
volatile so let's try again. You repeat the procedure, with the
reasonable, almost unconscious expectation that their data will have been
updated, and guess what, you get the exact same behavior. Not amusing!

Now, their customer service folks have given me a series of ever more
muddled and inconsistent explanations. First they said,

> Our system pulls the information from the Sabre network onto the site
> based on the data you enter in your search parameters. The airlines, car
> rental agencies, and hotels publish their information in Sabre and are
> responsible for updating it at least 5 times a day at times of their own
> choosing. Because the availability is sold in real time, the information
> can become past-dated between updates. Depending on your search method,
> you may see rates/fares offered that have no availability left, or
> itineraries that show valid prices based on our most current
> information, but are actually no longer available at that price when
> checked against actual availability in the system.

But when I insisted that I was the customer and I said it sucked that they
were displaying stale data regardless of the excuse, they said (and I wish
I were making this up):

<<The information we receive from Airlines is current at the point in
which is it is supplied.  We do not have have a direct connect to
availability, once a request is made, the new request is sent to the the
airlines to check against availability.>>

<<At this point the airlines will notify us if the availability is still
there.  As the availability is constantly changing, so is the
availability. [sic] >>

What is it with the airline/travel website industry? If they have the
wherewithal to connect with wherever and fetch current data at the moment
you are about to go for your plastic, then they can do it before they
display the prices, can't they?

Perhaps switch-and-bat is their true intention. But if they want to get it
right, they should hire some NYPHPers to rebuild the whole deal from the
ground up (-:


---
David Mintz
http://davidmintz.org/
Email: See http://dmintzweb.com/whitelist.php first!

"Y dále p'abajo"

	Tito Rojas